Power Play

Immigrant Settlement funds cut for Ontario

A government that has always yucked about integrating immigrants is now cutting funds to immigrant settlement agencies that work with women and children in GTA!

I hate most of these agencies because they are useless, but the ones targeted by Kenney are the good ones doing good work with women and children. They cut because they are servicing in Liberal MP areas - that's the bottom line.

See below for the CBC article with more details about the cuts.

The federal government has reduced funding for settling immigrants in Ontario because the money is now needed in provinces where the influx of newcomers is growing, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday.

Kenney said Toronto, for example, is settling fewer new immigrants, and that other parts of Canada are settling more.

"Toronto in particular is receiving fewer newcomers. More people are deciding to settle in other provinces, particularly western and Atlantic provinces, and so what we have to do is re-allocate the settlement funding to make sure that it’s following the newcomers," he said.

"It’s not fair to give settlement agencies in Toronto, that have seen a decline in number of immigrants, more funding than those that are struggling in other provinces, which are seeing an expanding number of newcomers," Kenney said.

Various agencies across Canada have been informed by letter in the last two weeks that their funding will be cut by $53 million in the next fiscal year, nearly $45 million of that in Ontario alone.

At least 10 immigrant settlement agencies in the Greater Toronto Area have been told their federal funding will not be renewed next year, and up to 35 others across Ontario are facing cuts.

Citizenship and Immigration says the cuts are part of an annual funding review of settlement programs, which help immigrants improve language skills and find jobs. The federal government says it is trying to make settlement spending more equitable to other parts of Canada.

Kenney's office said that since the Conservatives came to power they have tripled the amount of cash that goes to these settlement agencies. Officials say in 2005 the funding was $111 million, and in 2010, it was $346 million.

Toronto Liberal MP Bob Rae slammed the cuts.

"I don't think I've ever seen such a harsh and draconian and inexplicable cut to the most vulnerable people in our midst," he said.

"We as a community, we as a city, as a greater city, we accept and welcome well over 150,000 people a year from around the world," he added.

Toronto's South Asian Women's Centre may have to close

In light of the news of funding cuts, one agency that has served newcomers to Toronto for over 20 years said it may have to shut down.

Kripa Sehkar, executive director of the South Asian Women's Centre, said she was blindsided by the letter from Citizenship and Immigration.

"It was the most devastating news," she said. "This was not the [holiday] gift we expected from them."

More than half of the centre's operating budget, $570,000, will disappear.

For 20 years, women from countries such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have made their way to the centre's doors to get help settling in the city.

Sehkar said it served 14,000 clients last year, mostly South Asian women, and the cuts mean nine people are facing layoffs and hundreds of newcomers will be left to fend for themselves.

"We're still absorbing the news," Sekhar said. "Our hope is that this decision would be reversed."

 

Sri Lanka's Economy Expands 8%

Sri Lanka is one of the top future emerging markets, that Canadian companies need to look at. High literacy, ports, skilled labour and proximity to India provides an excellent growth opportunity for Canadian companies in a market whose GDP will grow in double digits for the next five years. Now is the time to get in!

Sri Lanka's tourism industry will also balloon and soon become number one, surpassing textiles and tea. This will create thousands of new jobs and westerners (and easterners) are happy to invest in tourism rather than tea or textiles...

The other sectors that will also see growth is infrastructure, with all the construction, oil and gas...

Sri Lanka  is a good place to invest now!

See below for Anusha Ondaatjie's article "Sri Lanka's Economy Expands 8%, Faster than Expected"

Sri Lanka is one of the top future emerging markets, that Canadian companies need to look at. High literacy, ports, skilled labour and proximity to India provides an excellent growth opportunity for Canadian companies in a market whose GDP will grown in double digits for the next five years. Now is the time to get in!

Sri Lanka’s economy expanded faster than analysts estimated, stoking price pressures that may force the central bank to raise interest rates.

Gross domestic product rose 8 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier after advancing 8.5 percent in the previous quarter, the statistics department said in a statement in Colombo today. The median of five estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 7.6 percent gain.

Sri Lanka’s central bank said yesterday it will take “appropriate” steps to check any “build up of demand pressures” after it kept borrowing costs unchanged for a fourth straight month. The end of a 26-year civil war in the nation has encouraged investments from companies including Aitken Spence & Co., helping make Sri Lanka’s benchmark All-Share Index the world’s second-best performer this year.

“With growth strengthening, the central bank will be concerned about inflation,” Sanjeewa Fernando, an analyst at CT Smith Stockbrokers Pvt. in Colombo, said before the report. “If inflation heads toward double digits, the central bank will surely tighten monetary policy.”

The Sri Lankan rupee was little changed at a two-year high of 110.93 per dollar at 3:28 p.m. in Colombo today, according to Standard Chartered Bank. The yield on the bond maturing in November 2013 was unchanged at 8.25 percent. The All-Share Index fell 0.2 percent.

Rate Stance

Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal yesterday held the central bank’s benchmark reverse repurchase rate at 9 percent, the lowest level since November 2004, and the repurchase rate at 7.25 percent, after lowering them in July and August.

Consumer prices in the capital, Colombo, rose 7 percent in November from a year earlier, the most since February 2009, after gaining 6.6 percent in October.

Cabraal reduced borrowing costs in 2010 to support economic expansion even as counterparts in neighboring India and Pakistan tightened monetary policy. He said Nov. 16 that rates are likely to stay unchanged until next year.

India on Nov. 2 boosted rates for the sixth time in 2010 to rein in consumer-price inflation running at more than 8 percent. Pakistan increased its benchmark discount rate on Nov. 29 for the third time since late July. Pakistan’s inflation rate rose 15.5 percent in November from a year earlier, the highest rate among the 17 Asian economies tracked by Bloomberg.

Sri Lanka is charting an economic policy aimed at accelerating growth and controlling inflation. Policy makers said Nov. 22 they will cut taxes on banks and builders, adopt an inflation target, and ease foreign-exchange rules.

Consumer Demand

Consumer demand and investments are growing in the Indian Ocean island nation after President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels in May 2009.

Sri Lanka’s personal and corporate credit grew 15.5 percent in September from a year earlier, almost double the level in July, according to the central bank. Tourist arrivals rose 46 percent in the 11 months through November from a year earlier, according to the nation’s tourism agency.

Aitken Spence, Sri Lanka’s biggest operator of resorts, said Sept. 30 it will build a hotel with Six Senses Resorts & Spas in an investment worth as much as $40 million. Profit at John Keells Holdings Plc., the country’s largest company by market value, rose almost five times to 2.9 billion rupees ($26.2 million) in the quarter ended Sept. 30.

The Colombo Stock Exchange index has climbed about 90 percent this year, behind only Mongolia among benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg.

Tax Cuts

Rajapaksa, while unveiling the 2011 budget in Colombo on Nov. 22, announced plans to lower the value-added tax for lenders to 12 percent from 20 percent, reduce the levy on construction companies to 12 percent and offer breaks to tea and rubber companies.

The government will also allow foreign investors to buy corporate debt in the country, let local residents purchase shares of foreign companies and enable insurers to invest up to 20 percent of their “long-term fund and technical reserves” abroad, he said.

Sri Lanka plans to introduce inflation targeting in its monetary policy in order to keep prices low for long periods, the central bank said Nov. 22. It didn’t say what level of inflation it would target.

The International Monetary Fund said Dec. 13 that Sri Lanka’s economy remains “strong” and GDP is likely to grow about 7.5 percent this year.

Toronto Youth 'Brainwashed' with Extremist Views of Islam, report says

This is funny. Tarek Fatah has been saying this all along and he was ridiculed for it. Now a two year international study costing millions is saying the same thing. Maybe Canadian politicians should start listening more to Canadians on Extremism, be it Jihadi, Khalistani or LTTE. Maybe our politicians should stop vote pandering and stop this abuse of I call "genocide" you give "votes".

See below for Isabel Teotonio's report on The Toronto Star.

Muslim youth say extremism is on the rise and that “brainwashing” is taking place in Toronto, according to a two-year international study on homegrown terrorism that will be released Wednesday.

Researchers with a UK-based think-tank studied the differences between violent and non-violent Islamic radicals across Europe and Canada — including the so-called Toronto 18 terror cell — and conducted focus groups in Toronto and Montreal with about 70 Muslim youth last year.

One focus group in Toronto made up of young men between the ages of 18 and 30, “was unanimous that brainwashing was taking place,” says the 250-page report, titled The Edge of Violence.

Pamphlets containing extremist views were being handed out in downtown public spaces, such as outside Toronto Eaton Centre, they said.

But while the literature promoted an extreme interpretation of Islam, there wasn’t an overtly violent element to it, said Jonathan Birdwell, one of the authors of the report by Demos, a think-tank focused on power and politics.

“I recall young people talking about brainwashing and I thought it was interesting that they put it in those terms,” said Birdwell, who was in town last weekend with co-author Jamie Bartlett to present their findings to members of the Muslim community.

In Toronto, researchers noted that Muslim youth were divided over the prevalence and threat of radicalization, but that various community experts saw radicalization as pervasive and dangerous.

Muhammad Robert Heft, who until recently ran P4ESupport, a centre for troubled Muslim youth that included a deradicalization program, wasn’t surprised by the findings.

Radicals typically brainwash youth into accepting extremist views as the pure teachings of the Quran and Hadith. The youth then build on those beliefs and undergo a process of “self-radicalization,” often concluding that the answer to the world’s problems is violent jihad, Heft told the Star.

Isa Munro, who participated in one of the focus groups for the new report, said when he converted to Islam nearly three years ago he felt like he was being brainwashed. But he thought it was for his own good.

“Nobody ever brainwashed me to be violent. I felt like I was being brainwashed to benefit myself,” Munro, 30, told the Star. People were giving him “proper advice” on being a good Muslim, he added.

Around the same time, Munro also starting having “extreme views,” thinking he wanted to study Islam overseas and participate in jihad. But he says those thoughts dissipated after attending Heft’s centre, which closed in April because it lacked funding.

“Now, I’m trying to be a good citizen… I just don’t have it within me to do those things.”

A shorter version of the report was released in March, when the case of the Toronto 18 was still before the courts. With the trials now over, publication bans have been lifted and the researchers are releasing a new, more complete version.

The researchers, which include McGill University PhD student Michael King, also traveled to Ottawa this week to meet with government officials. They argued that the al-Qaeda brand must be stripped of its glamour and mystique by emphasizing the incompetent and theologically incompatible side of al-Qaeda inspired terrorists.

British Tamils Protest Against Sri Lankan President

British Tamils protest against Sri Lankan President M. Rajapaksa for war crimes by Waving LTTE flags, a banned terrorist entity in the UK. These people support terrorism, suicide bombers and child soldiers but are calling for war crimes against a head of a state who fought terrorism (with questionable techniques).

I'm no fan of the tyranny of Rajapaksa and his family exerted in Sri Lanka and their tactics to suppress minorities and any one who questions them, but if people are not willing to condemn the terrorism of LTTE, then suck it up with Rajapaksa!

There are good Tamils and not so good Tamils everywhere, but the bad ones are a minority. If you get to know the good Sri Lankan Tamils you will really love them, they are very nice people, but for the pro LTTE ones who are racist and anti Indian Tamils too!